Finally, getting rid of the Electoral College would change the contours of the two-party system itself. If amassing the most votes were the only standard for election, it’s likely we would see more third-and fourth-party candidates. “Unless you get a third candidate like Ross Perot who was competitive, and that’s been rare,” Barone says, “the Electoral College works very much to their disadvantage, because you always get back to the ‘wasted vote’ theory.” Most voters don’t want to throw away their votes on a candidate who can’t win, and the public tends to move away from lesser candidates as Election Day approaches. They know full well that the electoral system does not reward even the strongest third-party candidate; in 1992, Perot received 19,741,048 popular votes and not a single vote in the Electoral College.
Of course, Perot was highly eccentric, to say the least, which limited his vote-getting appeal. Where a change in the system might really have an effect is with a candidate who is intensely popular with the hard-core base of one of the parties and who is able to generate high turnout in high-population areas.
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